AdmiralPeacock wrote:You're larbouring under the delusion that it's either A> Free Market or B> Socialism. One or the other. That's simply not representative of reality.

Well sure, we can look at resources that are "in between", and only partially socialized, i.e subsidized. Like food in Egypt, which ended up low in supply and high in price, and is blamed for sparking the riots in Egypt.http://www.voanews.com/english/news/mid ... 70879.html"price controls or food subsidies, which are expensive and bad for the economy in the long run"

Or you can look at the partially free healthcare market in the USA, which is heavily subsidized, and doing incredibly poorly.

Or food dumping in Africa and other areas by the USA and others in the form of "foreign aid". All it does is put farmers out of jobs and wreck the economy, whilst making Africans dependent on foreign aid in the same way a fed bird becomes dependent on the person feeding it.

Or the airline industry.

AdmiralPeacock wrote:it's objectively true that a nations with social services have a higher standard of living than nations without social services

Um, can you find me a nation without any social services? No, you can only measure the amount of money spent on social services as a percentage of GDP. And even then it's not exactly a relevant statistic in relation to HDI, as obviously a nation with a high GDP per capita that spends more on social services as a percentage of GDP is going to have a higher HDI than a nation with a low GDP per capita that spends very little on social services as a percentage of GDP, regardless of the economic growth of each nation. You can compare two nations with similar GDP per capita statistics, but looking at a list of nations by GDP per capita and a list of nations by HDI shows this to be a mixed result, as the USA and Norway are almost identical in GDP per capita and HDI, despite the fact that (from the statistics that I can find) the USA spends only 14.8% of its GDP on welfare whilst Norway spends 23.9% of its GDP on welfare.

You can, however, look at a state that has transitioned from high welfare to low welfare. Somalia is an excellent example, as it went from high welfare to almost no welfare during its period of statelessness, and experienced increases in standards of living.http://namcub.accela-labs.com/pdf/Bette ... teless.pdf

AdmiralPeacock wrote:Perhaps you should be more careful with the tenses then. "Nations like China, while having their heart in the right place and trying to socialise food so that the poorest can eat the same meal as the rich, experienced famine. " I accept that you might have meant a past tense, but you didn't even imply one.

The word experienced is past tense. Regardless this is a matter of miscommunication and isn't relevant.

AdmiralPeacock wrote:Likewise - you just strawman my arguments (i.e. arguing against communists for some stupid reason)

I am not arguing against communists (as if communism is the only political stance that advocates socialization of resources?), I am arguing in favour of total economic freedom. Which you are arguing against. Or did I misinterpret your multiple arguments in favour of state regulation and state control of the economy?

Yeah, I know you're not arguing against all freedoms. Have you considered that maybe you're misinterpreting my argument, though? I'm saying that the more free a resource becomes economically, the more growth it experiences, as well as experiencing lower prices. This doesn't mean that I think you want communism. It means I believe economic freedom should not be in some grey area between communism and absolute freedom, which you seem to want.

AdmiralPeacock wrote:your arguments can be boiled down to a kind of quasi-juvenile interpretation of inherent social obligation which is evident in the language you use

Lol?

AdmiralPeacock wrote:Fuck you

This one is particularly annoying, and not just because you refer to me along with my "ilk" as if we are evil fiends, but because I know your definition of my "ilk" would include everyone to the right side of the political spectrum, including conservatives.

AdmiralPeacock wrote:you or your ilk

Annnnd here is where it all started.

AdmiralPeacock wrote:Another conservative that can not look beyond their own self righteousness to present has "pinko commies" another ridiculous strawman of a generalized image of the left. Joy!

I honestly tried to be polite. Honestly. Clearly though you're a deluded hypocrite of the most monstrous kind, and far too ignorant of it.Oh, and "fuck you" isn't an argument.

AdmiralPeacock wrote:http://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/press ... rices-poorIt focuses on the debate on how to get quality medicines into poorer countries (tighter quality regulation vs enforced intellectual property laws) - but the fact there are substandard medicines in such abundance in these countries without any real regulation is my point.

Well you've seemed to miss the fact that enforced intellectual property law is regulation.The funny thing is though, the entire article goes on about "poor countries" and "rich countries" whilst rarely even naming a country. Indeed, this quote:"studies indicate that in some countries as much as 44 per cent of certain types of medicines, such as anti-malarials, are substandard"is exceptionally hilarious, as it refers to 'some countries' without actually naming any of them, and does not even give a source for the studies. I mean seriously?

AdmiralPeacock wrote:http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs134/en/Briefly talks about Herbal Medicine and the safety issues.

Um, ok? This just gives a few statistics about the sales of herbal medicines, and gives no information on the statistics of counterfeit herbal medicines, the statistics of dangerous herbal medicines, or the statistics of people injured by herbal medicines. So what is the point of this?In the paragraph about "Safety, effectiveness and quality", they even admitted they don't know much about herbal medicine.

AdmiralPeacock wrote:FDA History - Part IThe 1906 Food and Drugs Act and Its Enforcementhttp://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/WhatWeDo/Hi ... 054819.htm"While Wiley was stumping for a law, muckraking journalists such as Samuel Hopkins Adams exposed in vivid detail the hazards of the marketplace. In fact, the nauseating condition of the meat-packing industry that Upton Sinclair captured in The Jungle was the final precipitating force behind both a meat inspection law and a comprehensive food and drug law"

Since this source doesn't list what the journalists discovered about the marketplace, or what made the meat-packing industry nauseating, I can't exactly form a counter-argument to this.

AdmiralPeacock wrote:Edwin Markham children in Bondage (1914)http://www.sjsu.edu/reading/markham.htm#ChildrenThe authors begin by noting that the 1900 Census indicated that about 2 million children were wage earners. Markham wrote 11 of the chapters including the ones that detailed the nature of the work children were engaged in including working in glass factories, sweatshops, coal mines, the tobacco industry, canneries, street peddling, and holiday workers making decorations and boxing gift items. In Chapter VI (p. 122), Markham comments on the holiday related work some children were engaged in:

"Three months before Christmas the smaller confectionary establishments call in troops of little children and begin full work and overtime work, making ready for the brave pomp of the holidays. There must be preparation of the bulging paper sack and the swollen tarlatan bag of the Christmas tree, for the bottle of straited sticks, and the pudgy "sucker" with its noble lasting quality. Tons upon tons of candy must be prepared for the holiday markets. What irony of civilization is this - one band of children wasting their bodies and souls to make a little joy for the rest? What sardonic mind conceived the caricature of justice, this burlesque of life?""

Yeah, and no one is forcing those children to work. They can quit at any time. Which is the most obvious flaw in the statement "children wasting their bodies and souls".You're ignoring the benefits though. Many children aren't as intelligent as the people on this board, and do not benefit from education. They are better off learning from a direct experience in the workforce than learning math that they will never make use of.

Yeah, a lot of the world lives in poverty, I know. And I blame it on states funneling wealth to the elite through carefully designed regulations.My solution is removing the state. I also believe those envious of the USA are living in poverty simply because their state was far too restrictive on the economy, while the USA enjoyed economic freedom and thus prospered. Not because the free market somehow destroyed their lives.

AdmiralPeacock wrote:FDA History - Part IThe 1906 Food and Drugs Act and Its Enforcementhttp://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/WhatWeDo/Hi ... 054819.htm"While Wiley was stumping for a law, muckraking journalists such as Samuel Hopkins Adams exposed in vivid detail the hazards of the marketplace. In fact, the nauseating condition of the meat-packing industry that Upton Sinclair captured in The Jungle was the final precipitating force behind both a meat inspection law and a comprehensive food and drug law"

You've seemed to ignore my proposed situation of dealing with injury sustained through free trade, also known as property aggression. If you are injured from something you've bought, you can sue the distributor using a court. This will ensure businesses have incentive not to harm their customers, or destroy their property via oil mining, etc. This is also coupled with points I've already made about competition - Businesses don't want to lose customers. And I also talked about a system of 'before-the-fact' regulation that Gnug was talking about in this thread.viewtopic.php?f=65&t=6547You can choose not to buy a product unless it has been inspected by a trusted inspection firm and has the inspection firm's watermark placed on it. This does not inhibit freedom of course, harmful substances such as alcohol and cigarettes could still be sold without the seller being at risk of being sued, they could simply have their customer sign a contract of some sort, so that the customer acknowledges they face risk of injury.

You see, my system places absolute control in the hands of the buyer. The state does not interfere in their exchange.

AdmiralPeacock wrote:Ignore these all you want.

I didn't. Except for the lecture.

AdmiralPeacock wrote:They hold together in the cartel because it is in their best interest to.

No, I already told you why they have more incentive to undercut the rest of the cartel, because it means they can steal the market.

AdmiralPeacock wrote:If that is the only way you can think of it, you're without creativity - as I said, the companies that form cartels are usually the largest of the industry (or at least the local market) and can absorb the loses need to undercut the new competition

This is not creative. This argument has been made before. I already knew about this argument. You're assuming that undercutting the new competition occurs only for a brief period. Do you think that new competition just stops appearing after the first try? New competition is going to be constantly coming, every time new competition is put out of business by the cartel it gives newer competition even more incentive to enter the market, as they will know that the cartel has been weakened due to running at a loss to undercut the previous competition. No matter how big a cartel is it cannot run at a loss indefinitely. And of course, if they're undercutting new competition the whole time, their cartel is no longer a problem, is it?

AdmiralPeacock wrote:Example, you have two big grocery stores in a shopping centre

How much do you want to bet that your two big grocery stores are given subsidies and economic protection from the government, just like the airlines? Of course I don't actually know whether they are, I don't even know what your local grocery stores are. But I feel confident enough to bet on it.

AdmiralPeacock wrote:So? They compete against each other - there is still a market on an international scale.

So? So? Did you ignore everything I just said? Yeah, they compete against each other on an international market. Only the number of competitors is tremendously reduced due to regulations and economic protection, and you completely ignored my statement about flight route rights. Yeah, they are competing, but only if the states they fly between let them compete! Even if I was a multi-billionaire, I could not set up an airline business and enter the market in an attempt to undercut the existing airlines and steal their profits, because I likely would not be allowed to. I would simply not be given rights to fly along flight routes. Did you read that source I gave on Air France? EasyJet wanted to come in and compete, they wanted to try and offer the french a better service, but the french government did not allow EasyJet to! It's as simple as that!

So, your criticism is not a criticism of the free market at all, which is why it is irrelevant. Can you demonstrate to me why the airline industry is indeed a free market? Can you demonstrate why it is as competitive as, say, the software industry (which is one of the more free areas of the market)?

Gnug215 wrote:No, but it does so most of the time, and it is shaped by public opinion most of the time - also simply because the state, which you keep referring to as some kind of single-minded autonomous blob, consits of people. So no, a "state" won't try to get away with as much as it can without inciting a revolution; people in a given government might.No, I didn't watch those two videos. It seems clear that things work differently in the US than... everywhere else.

Yes, a state will sway to the desires of the public in many cases. But as I said it does not have to, and often doesn't, as the only thing keeping it in check is the fear of revolution.

A state may consist of people, but what is the percentage of politicians in comparison to the entire public that lives within the state? Politicians are the only ones in control, they can dictate law and how social services such as police are to operate. And it is very easy to bribe a politician, indeed a senator was involved in the creation of the federal reserve in order to make himself rich from the bribes of the bankers that were also involved. This is outlined in the book The Creature from Jekyll Island and in the recorded lecture, as well as numerous other sources.

Gnug215 wrote:Private business relies first and foremost on profit, everything else is secondary. Private business can "buy" reputation with advertising

Ilikemustard wrote:There are multiple things wrong with this argument.

a) It assumes it would be more profitable to buy out media than it would be to actually inspect products. Because apparently buying out media is super-cheap these days?b) It ignores the fact that inspection firms are in competition - If one inspection firm can buy out media, others can too. If it is found that firmA is being dodgy and not inspecting products properly, what is stopping firmB from buying out media to tarnish firmA's image and let people know that it is not a trustable firm?c) It assumes that buying out media will thoroughly cover up the issue. The internet is most definitely going to make sure their bad practice is known about. Activists, too, are always handy in raising awareness, as they have done so many times in the past.d) You stated at the end "give it a little time"... What are you doing in this time? Not making any profit? When your image problem 'disappears', are you going to do it all over again, then spend a boatload of cash on buying out media, then spend a while getting no revenue at all? How is this a profitable business model?

Edit: I realised after re-reading this that I misread "advertisement" and instead read "media" for some reason. But the point still stands that buying a lot of advertisement will not cover up an issue that can not escape the various forms of media, including the internet.

Gnug215 wrote:and it can buy up its competitors

I already covered this in another thread. I will quote it for you.

Ilikemustard wrote:First, monopolies don't form in a free market. A good example I have read of why they don't is that as they get bigger, the cost of buying out the market increases. If companyA's competitors see companyA trying to become a monopoly, they know they can charge much higher prices when companyA tries to buy them out. If companyA owns 95% of the market, and you are one of the last few competitors, you know you can charge incredibly high prices for companyA to buy you, as there aren't many other companies you are competing with in stock price.Not only this, but companyA is continually faced with new competition springing up. The more monopolistic a company becomes, the less competition they face, and the more inefficient they are able to become. This means it is in fact easier to compete with them, so people begin investing in firms that are in competition.

What I failed to cover was the fact that as a company buys out the market, it is accumulating debt on account of the incredibly high cost of buying out the market. This means it has to increase its prices in order to make up for this debt, making them easier to compete with for new competitors.

Gnug215 wrote:. It has incentive to make money off products, which should be as cheap as they can possibly get away with

Not really... Why do you think people would rather eat at a 5 star restaurant instead of McDonalds?

Gnug215 wrote:Deliberately? I doubt it. It's certain, however, that they have deliberately cut costs as much as they good, and in the process often made dangerous products

Ok, yes, my demonstration of competition as a form of regulation does have flaws. Unfortunately, I forgot to make light of an argument I had already made in another thread, which addresses your problem of 'before-the-fact' regulation. To clarify my position more thoroughly, I am not against regulation in the sense of inspecting a product to make sure it is safe, I am against state regulation.

I will quote the argument for you.

Ilikemustard wrote:Here's how it would work in an intelligent society: The meat sellers would pay a private firm to inspect their product, and then if it passes their inspection it would be stamped with the third party firm's seal, or watermark. This would let consumers know that the product is safe for consumption. If people choose to buy products that don't have a watermark from an inspection firm, it is their fault if they contract some horrible disease. I know what you're thinking, what's stopping the meat sellers from paying off the inspection firm to put their watermark on their meat without inspection?a) That conclusion assumes it would be more profitable to pay off the inspection firm and sell bad meat than sell good meatb) The inspection company has a reputation to uphold. If it is found that they passed a product without inspection, or that a faulty product got past their inspection, people will not trust them anymore, and so companies will no longer go to that firm for inspection, as people are not going to buy a product that has the seal of an untrusted inspection firm.

Even with this, it's still possible to sue a company if their product injures you somehow, so that is also giving them incentive to not sell you a faulty product.

As I said in my previous post to AdmiralPeacock, this gives the consumer absolute control over their product, as they have a say in every aspect of its purchase.

Gnug215 wrote:Sure, I generalized, and perhaps it's not fair to lump a whole business together and calling it dishonest

I will answer your question more seriously. No, I don't believe the level of dishonest businesses will increase, due to the point I've already made about competition keeping businesses in check. Though if a business advertises their product dishonestly, it can be dealt with by courts, as it is a breach of trade due to the fact that the customer is not receiving the item that they intended to pay for. This would also be how fraud it dealt with.

Gnug215 wrote:Yes, of course there are corrupt politicians and state officials. Does that make the entire system rotten?

Well, yes. I mean I know that not all politicians are corrupt, and that there are legitimate ones that want to help people, but the fact that any politician can simply accept a bribe and change the lives of millions of people they do not know for the worse makes the entire system corrupt, in my opinion.

Gnug215 wrote:Yes, I know that alcohol is harmful, and I don't suggest we ban it, nor sugar. But the state has a vested interest in fixing the problem in a way that private business never could.No, you can't tell people what to put in their bodies, but you can educate them, inform them, help them, regulate the toxic compounds, control them at least just a bit so that the disaster isn't total.

Sorry, I should have made this point in my original response to this question.

The free market does handle it. You have seen the documentary-film Supersize Me, no? That probably rose more awareness about McDonalds than any state program ever did.Added to this is the fact that competitors will likely help fund projects such as this.

Gnug215 wrote:What I mean is... the state doesn't entirely and intentionally quash private enterprise, even when it's harmful. And in a society where private enterprise is so free that entities like Coca Cola and McDonalds are allowed to exist, one would also assume that such freedom would produce a private solution to the problem, right? And yet this isn't the case

How do you know Coca-Cola and McDonalds don't bribe politicians in order to receive protection in the form of regulatory barriers? I'm just speculating here though, I haven't actually looked into this.

Gnug215 wrote:Anyway, I think your trust in private business is unrealistic, just as I'm sure you feel my trust in the state (which is not as high as I'm letting on here, of course - that is only a byproduct of my position) is unrealistic - and vice versa with distrust towards the two entities.Your examples, while many of them well-argued, are in many cases impossible to fully grasp in a context which you suggest. I don't propose I grasp the context either, of course.I'm not advocating full-on state power here, but nor do I accept your position.

Fair enough. I only hope I've planted the seeds for future change in your mind, and opened you up to the possibilities.

Fine, you're still hiding from my point. One useless road doesn't even compare in waste to basically every major road in America having one or two more built right next to it by competing road companies. It's an awful, awful idea. Not as awful as private courts or private police, but still awful.

Honestly though, if you think ensuring the quality of our food, water, and pharmaceuticals isn't a valuable government service, you and I aren't on close enough ground to have a discussion.

You two are conflating a state, a federated unit of government in the United States; with State, a generic term for a government.

I still don't see what that has to do with public vs. private enterprise.

"When I come to my own beliefs, I find myself quite unable to discern any purpose in the universe, and still more unable to wish to discern one." ~ Bertrand Russell"If we do not succeed, we run the risk of failure." ~ Dan Quayle